1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for managing contents that includes a plurality of contents-elements representing information to be provided to users.
2) Description of the Related Art
Recent spread of the Internet enabled users to obtain various pieces of information through a network. A relevant technology is to assign an index to multimedia information provided to the users so that the users can search for desired information efficiently (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-7418). All those technologies are making an improvement on convenience of the Internet.
One of So-called “killer applications” that made a contribution to the spread of the Internet is “e-learning”. This is a method of conducting an education by providing teaching materials using a personal computer (PC) or a computer network. Compared with learning in a classroom, it has excellent advantages such as providing an education to remote areas, leaning at users' convenience at any time during 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, and utilization of teaching materials unique to the computer.
In recent years, however, proliferation of massive information sometimes causes unnecessary information to be provided to the users. Such unnecessary information only increases a communication data amount, resulting in a heavy traffic communication lines. Besides, it gives the users a hard time with letting them select desired information from among a bunch of extraneous information.
Particularly in the e-learning, since most learners are busy, an attention is paid to how to provide learning contents that satisfy the learners' needs efficiently.
From this viewpoint, it is highly desired to provide a technology that can provide information satisfying all the required needs to the users efficiently not more and not less than needed.